Terry Pratchett takes Shakespeare's Macbeth and then turns it up 'till the knob comes off. It's all there - a wicked duke and duchess, the ghost of the murdered king, dim soldiers, strolling players, a land in peril. And who stands between the Kingdom and destruction? Three witches. Granny Weatherwax (intolerant, self-opinionated, powerful), Nanny Ogg (down-to-earth, vulgar) and Magrat Garlick (naive, fond of occult jewellery and bunnies). Stephen Briggs has been involved in amateur dramatics for over 25 years and he assures us that the play can be staged without needing the budget of Industrial Light and Magic. Not only that, but the cast should still be able to be in the pub by 10 o'clock! Oh, and a world of advice omitted from the play text: LEARN THE WORDS Havelock, Lord Vetinari

Stephen Briggs

Terry Pratchett

The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983 - the Disc is now over 40 years old!

Pratchett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours.

In 2007 he announced online that he had been newly diagnosed with a very rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's (an 'embuggerance', as he called it) called Posterior Cortical Atrophy and in March of 2008 he donated US$1,000,000 to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

Not one to let a life-altering condition slow him down, Terry continued to write and promote charitable acts. In 2012 he collaborated with Stephen Baxter to publish The Long Earth, a science fiction story of parallel worlds and new fontiers. The sequel, The Long War, was published in 2013 with a third in the trilogy, The Long Mars, published in 2014. What an absolute hero.

On March 12th 2015 it was announced that Sir Terry had passed away at home, surrounded by his family, with his cat sleeping on his bed.